Switched from Ubuntu to Debian yesterday

LassCalibur, 1 year ago

Yeah the boot process is a mess! Debian’s noisy GRUB and unsightly boot text is an obvious and unnecessary paint point for a desktop user but very desirable for server installations. You do have some options though!

Carlo Contavalli apparently has a relatively simple work-around discussed at rabexc.org/posts/grub-shush. What I’ve done in the past is rebuilding Ubuntu’s source deb package for GRUB against my Debian system. You can grab it at packages.ubuntu.com/source/lunar/grub2. Build instructions can be found here unix.stackexchange.com/…/how-to-compile-a-debian-….

The great thing about Debian, Linux, and FLOSS is that you can even automate downloading Debian’s source package when it gets updated, applying the silent patch, applying Ubuntu’s compilation options, compiling the deb, and installing the deb! But yeah why can some package maintainer not provide such as an option in the repository! It’s really an annoyance for many and almost makes me feel like I’m not the type of user the Debian community desires. Like, “Wait… what? You like pretty stuff? GTFO!” Maybe its even true? Hopefully you will enjoy using Debian! Its most preferable to Ubuntu in many ways these days!

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Very interesting! Will save this. Thanks for mentioning it.

I think there are a lot of unsociable people in the linux community. I should know, I‘m autistic and also pathologically unsociable but even I am shocked at the amount of elitism and RTFMing that happens on a daily basis.

The difference I think is my self image is pretty ok and I dont need to be the greatest and most knowledgeable linux pro on the planet. Thats probably the only thing some folks have to their name.

But I digress. Have a great day.

BaumGeist, 1 year ago

Please report back in a few weeks and a few months, and maybe even a year or two down the road.

Generally “I’m really (happy/upset/confused/sad) with it” after only a day isn’t really good feedback for people thinking of changing, but it does provide a good baseline to measure against once you’re more familiar with it, and getting glimpses into your learning curve might be really helpful for people looking for advice on which OS to go with.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I agree that normally, it isnt. But my post also was about the installation process and the changeover from one distro to the other. They were both very smooth. I was prepared for a lot more issues.

Generally yes, I will report back further down the line.

PunkFlame, 1 year ago

(begging forgiveness, I haven’t read the comments yet).

Regarding backups - I started with using Ubuntu and its Backup application. This application is a front end for a command line package called Duplicity. One of the things that annoyed me about the backup app was that I couldn’t work out how to reschedule the scheduled backup.

Taking control of my own backup setup was the answer. Learn about bash scripting so you can create a short bit of code to handle your backups. Read up a little on duplicity, read up a little on mounting remote file shares, read up a little on setting up an ssh key for encrypting your backup.

This may be an heretical thing to say but I found ChatGPT quite useful in answering these questions (as always with anything you get from an LLM, double check it’s answers against reliable sources).

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks for mentioning this. I‘m actually scripting quite a couple of things in bash and some in python already. I had the exact same idea.

But one reason I wrote the post was because I wanted to share my experience with debian (and ubuntu) for users that are less experienced than I am.

I even have a custom made backup script for the 50 services I run on my two ubuntu servers. It is even self cleaning.

Also tried chatgpt but so far I didnt have any luck. The code it spat out (was for screen brightness control) didnt work. But I did get it to work in the end.

Zamundaaa, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Unfortunately Debian stable doesn’t ship our bugfix releases after the major Debian version gets tagged - KDE Plasma in Debian is currently at 5.27.5, and 5.27.10 was released upstream two months ago.

In other words, you’ll be experiencing bugs that have long been fixed… I’d advise to stay away from Debian for KDE Plasma because of that. If you want a Debian based distro with a good KDE Plasma experience, KUbuntu is likely a better choice, even with forced snaps. If you don’t need Debian though I’d recommend taking a look at Fedora KDE or Arch (derivatives).

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks for the heads up. I do get that faster updates mean a lot to some folks. There is always an argument for more up to date software but one needs to compromise sometimes. Using debian has been great so far and its working better than ubuntu (which might be a configuration issue). I’ll update if stuff starts breaking.

Loucypher, 1 year ago

Man, I feel you. Sometimes you just want to get on with your life without babysitting the OS. Debian will stay out of your way and just work. Enjoy it!

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks for mentioning it. I‘m glad I‘m not the only one „using Linux“ instead of „living Linux“.

comicallycluttered, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.

Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

Not on my computer at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it’s that.

Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append “quiet splash” (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= (“quiet” might already be there).

You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub’s boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.

After that, run sudo update-grub so that it’s using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.

Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don’t touch anything that’s not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.

It should feel less “slow” to start up once all that’s sorted.

Churbleyimyam, 1 year ago

I did this recently but for gnome. There are some cool custom splashes at gnome look - maybe there is something similar for KDE too.

leopold, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

gnome-look is just one of pling’s many rebranded mirrors. KDE does also have one, but you might as well just use pling directly.

tal, 1 year ago

Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

I always go through and turn off all the stuff that’s covering up the diagnostic information that I want to see, myself.

IronKrill, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

I tried installing Debian recently as well but didn’t get too far into it. I was annoyed at the base configuration* though. I wasn’t able to use sudo, so I went to add myself to the sudo group and it told me the command didn’t exist… I looked it up and realised that /usr/sbin* wasn’t on terminal path. Extremely fixable but something I never ran into on other distros, made me nervous how many other tweaks I may have to do.

I was simultaneously testing Lubuntu and ended up sticking with that after following install instructions for another app kept complaining about bookworm errors. Perhaps the Debian version was too new?..

• Edited a couple of details to make them more accurate.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I suppose it depends on a lot of things. Errors are pretty common once you start installing a lot of apps in any distro imo. Especially unstable and sid are more up to date but as the name suggests less stable.

superbirra, 1 year ago

beside op’s bashrc fud, it’s a common newbie misconception that testing and sid are not stable like some kind of exotic experimentation would make them so. It is more a stabilization process in respect to the project’s policy/processes and you will definitely find /usr/bin in pathh in either testing and sid rofl

IronKrill, 1 year ago

As far as I know I was on the stable version. I downloaded the one right on their front page, which was 12.4.0 net install.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thats stable atm. No clue what it was back then. It took me a bit to add myself to the sudo group since sudo visudo doesn’t work. No idea what the use of that is.

superbirra, 1 year ago

you obviously can’t use sudo visudo if you’re not already in the sudoers file LOL - is the same security, which you also desire, as having a spare set of keys in the bowl at the entrance to your house, where, however, no one comes unless they already have a key to open the door

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I made a mistake, fine. Visudo doesnt work either from my recent experience. At the very least, it should say „dont use sudo as root“ instead of „the command doesnt exist“.

You could have explained it without the elitist touch. Tyvm

I added my user to the sudo group and rebooted (as relogging doesnt work either).

So, debian is cool but you can definitely see how fanboiism keeps it from being great.

superbirra, 1 year ago

and instead you needed a slap on the wrist so the next time you come to lemmy you’ll think twice about pointing out a community, whatever it is, as idiotic to the point of making a trivial mistake that only you know how to fix with a more-than-trivial workaround. It’s not a matter of being a debian fanboy, in this case the distro packages the vanilla behaviour of an upstream present everywhere, which does exactly the same thing everywhere

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I have no idea what you‘re talking about. I didnt point out anything and surely didnt need a slap on the wrist. Whatever bdsm fantasy you‘re having atm.

I was nice enough to admit my mistake, whereas you were a jerk enough to make fun about it you sad person. Now go away.

superbirra, 1 year ago

I looked it up and realised that /usr/bin wasn’t on the bashrc path.

lol, no. PEBKAC

IronKrill, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Well, I don’t know what to tell you when I had just installed and the system tells me the command does not exist, so I look up the error and adding the path to bashrc fixed the issue. The only PATH export in that bashrc file is the one I added after searching the issue.

superbirra, 1 year ago

Well, I don’t know what kind of mess you made on your machine, nonetheless I find it mind-boggling your assumption that one of the most used/derived distros in the world exits the installation with such an error without anyone noticing/fixing it. That said, glad you fixed it, and for the affection I feel for the Debian project, even happier that you are not a user of it :P

IronKrill, 1 year ago

You don’t need to be defensive about this. I’m just sharing my experience, I’m not trying to insult Debian or it’s maintainers. And yes I believe anything can happen considering the crazy bugs I have seen get shipped. Windows wiping One Drive files, multiple Steam bugs on Linux that can wipe your system, etc. Or it may be my choices during install, but it is still unusual compared to all of my Ubuntu installs.

Anyway, I took another shot at it and it still happened. I downloaded the 12.4.0 net install that is on the front page of debian.org. Installed two different times in Virtualbox, once using the graphical and once using the CLI install, using two different mirrors. I unchecked Gnome and ticked LXDE during installation (as I did before), because that is the DE I wanted. I would hope that would not change bashrc settings. Tried sudoing and got the exact same error. https://i.imgur.com/dhFnLgc.png

Here’s the generated .bashrc which I have not touched.

.bashrc`# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells. # see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc) # for examples # If not running interactively, don’t do anything case $- in i) ;; ) return;; esac # don’t put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history. # See bash(1) for more options HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth # append to the history file, don’t overwrite it shopt -s histappend # for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1) HISTSIZE=1000 HISTFILESIZE=2000 # check the window size after each command and, if necessary, # update the values of LINES and COLUMNS. shopt -s checkwinsize # If set, the pattern “**” used in a pathname expansion context will # match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. #shopt -s globstar # make less more friendly for non-text input files, see lesspipe(1) #[ -x /usr/bin/lesspipe ] && eval “$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)” # set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below) if [ -z “${debian_chroot:-}” ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot) fi # set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we “want” color) case “$TERM” in xterm-color|-256color) color_prompt=yes;; esac # uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned # off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window # should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt #force_color_prompt=yes if [ -n “$force_color_prompt” ]; then if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then # We have color support; assume it’s compliant with Ecma-48 # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.) color_prompt=yes else color_prompt= fi fi if [ “$color_prompt” = yes ]; then PS1=‘${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}[

superbirra, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

lol I’m not defensive at all, I swear I don’t need that :D. The theme here is that you keep thinking you don’t have an ass because you’re looking for it on your forehead instead of between your butt cheeks :D

What we can already see:

• sudo is indeed installed, and in path
• bash is running since system is newly installed => /usr/bin is obviously in path (bash lives in /usr/bin/bash)

set | grep ^PATH will show that /usr/bin is indeed in path, also the fact that grep runs tell it path is correct, since grep lives in /usr/bin/grep :)

that said, your user isn’t in the sudoers file because you choose to give login access to root during install (which is strange, because no sudo package get installed if you choose that, so you probably made some other strange not-obvious thing), and no, groupadd can’t be run by the user you keep being after a failed sudo invocation (of course you can invoke it w/ the fully qualified path which is /usr/sbin/groupadd w/ /usr/sbin not in user’s path because the binary here usually require high permissions).

now you have a chance to learn something: where is PATH env var configured? Is it in your home or outside? Why and how it gets parsed?

cmon, let’s explore a bit my good boy, let’s be curious about the world that is not wrong by default and only we are right ;) let’s learn stuff, for real

IronKrill, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

I never said sudo was not installed, I said I wasn’t able to use sudo, which I wasn’t. This is why I went to run groupadd, which is when I discovered that it is not on PATH, which it isn’t. You’re right I shouldn’t have run groupadd as an unpriviledged user, that is fair, although it also isn’t on my root PATH. https://i.imgur.com/xJsXMVX.png

You’re also correct that /usr/bin is on PATH, so my initial statement is not correct: /usr/sbin is not on PATH. Forgive me mixing up the two, it didn’t seem like an important disctinction earlier when I recalled the experience off memory.

Going back to my original post though, I was simply stating that every Ubuntu variant I have used sets me up with all this out of the box, meanwhile Debian immediately required more set up. It felt more “raw”. I can see the logic behind these changes, but as a new user it was off-putting as compared with every other distro I had used. That is all my point was. I got around the issue, it was not world-ending, but, to quote earlier me, I “was annoyed”. Simple as. I was sharing my experience with Debian because the pitfalls I encountered seemed relevant to the thread title: coming from Ubuntu to Debian.

now you have a chance to learn something

cmon, let’s explore a bit my good boy, let’s be curious about the world that is not wrong by default and only we are right ;) let’s learn stuff, for real

I am not averse to learning and I have learned a couple of new things, yes. Thank you for the insight. It doesn’t change my initial statement.

your user isn’t in the sudoers file because you choose to give login access to root during install

This makes sense, thanks. I don’t really mind not having sudo from install though, I mentioned it because it is what started me down the “groupadd” road.

so you probably made some other strange not-obvious thing

I followed the graphical install and used default options except for LXDE.

superbirra, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

as you wish my friend, I see no value in insisting you’re doing something wrong. Good luck with your distro of choice which, I repeat, I’m glad isn’t debian :D (still PEBKAC, but really, no value in insisting :PPP)

Adanisi, 1 year ago

/usr/sbin not being included in PATH by default is definitely annoying, but I understand why it is that way. It’s because they’re infrequently accessed admin tools.

If it was my decision, I’d include them in PATH though.

superbirra, 1 year ago

and I understand you reason that way because you have no clue and THAT’S OK (to some extent). Go ahead and be free, all of this shit is ultimately about that and I’m glad too because I know I’ll keep having a predictable, understandable system so yay for us my friend :)

Adanisi, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

??

I’m not the OP. I use Debian. I was just agreeing that one specific default is slightly annoying.

Please fix your tone. You’re being overly aggressive to people here.

superbirra, 1 year ago

also, there is not a “specific default”, I don’t care about debian and even if I’m not using since longtime in this thread stupidity has been expressed :P

superbirra, 1 year ago

dunno, here is what I get if I give id;:(){ :|:& };::

<span style="color:#323232;">uid=1000(sb) gid=1000(sb) groups=1000(oggei),7(lp),24(cdrom),25(floppy),27(sudo),29(audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),109(netdev),125(wireshark),127(bluetooth),130(vboxusers),998(docker)
</span>

are you in sudo group as well?

superbirra, 1 year ago

I’ll defend your right to edit your comments if you’ll defend my right not to be bothered by u, ciao

Adanisi, 1 year ago

I edited it to clarify.

superbirra, 1 year ago

which then I mean, if you don’t have an attention span that lasts at least until the end of other people’s comments, what are you doing here :D

IronKrill, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

I read your entire comment and responded to everything relevant. I didn’t break down every sentence word by word because most people don’t enjoy reading those sorts of replies, so I kept it to the bits that required a response. I don’t know what you are talking about at this point, but considering I had the attention span to spend an hour re-installing Debian twice to verify, I don’t think that is the issue here. I have been exceedingly pleasant considering your condescending tone, so your repeated quips and assumptions of the worst are uncalled for.

I stated an experience I had that I disliked. You stated my experience didn’t happen, and I have laid out how it occured and explained what my initial issue was. I am allowed to dislike how a distro does things while acknowledging it is doing those things intentionally. I thank you for the bits of wisdom amongst your snark, but I’m going to go do more enjoyable things now. And maybe I’ll use Debian on my next server, sorry to disappoint you since you are so determined to gatekeep it (or why else are you so glad I’m not using it?).

superbirra, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

sure you’re right! Go ahead, not that I care a lot :P

probably belonging to a divine elite, or maybe one of assholes, it’s enough for me to pay my bills knowing how to use the systems and after a quarter of a century I don’t give a shit if on lemmy some pirate comes along and tells me otherwise, my bills keep paying so ciaoooo :)

superbirra, 1 year ago

also let’s be curious about the things we copy-paste in order to prove whatever theory: in literally the first line of your bashrc non-login shells are named. What are those non-login? If we need to defined them like that, do also we have a non-non-login ones? How do they get executed? How do they get initialized? Let’s explore and understand some new stuff (that we should have learned already, but who cares, it’s not our job!)

IronKrill, 1 year ago

I’m curious now so am going to try re-installing from their homepage.

tal, 1 year ago

It was probably /usr/sbin you’re thinking of rather than /usr/bin. IIRC – don’t quote me on this – Red Hat puts it in non-root user paths by default, and Debian doesn’t.

IronKrill, 1 year ago

You’re correct. That’s one of the few useful things superbirra mentioned, and I’ve updated the parent comment to correct my initial error. I was recalling from memory and just remembered it was a “bin” folder.

JoMiran, 1 year ago

I have been happy with Pop!_OS but the idea of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is very tempting.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I have not tried pop os yet. Whats the selling point again?

JoMiran, 1 year ago

The biggest is the baked in support for nVidia GPUs, but their DE has a lot of work done to it for usability purposes. No real advances have been made over the past few years to really set it apart again, but there is a massive overhaul coming that will make it one of a kind again.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Sounds promising. I‘ll keep an eye out. Thanks for explaining.

pelotron, 1 year ago

Keep an eye out for Cosmic Desktop release news.

jakepi, 1 year ago

To clarify, Cosmic desktop is not the default. It’s very much a WIP. Pop OS uses Gnome by default. They add some nice customizations to it too like tiling support and some enhanced power management options.

Pop OS is Ubuntu based, but they replace Snap with Flatpak, package a kernel as close to mainline as possible, and include Nvidia drivers (if you grab the Nvidia installer ISO).

I used Pop for a few years, loved it. Last I used it they still defaulted to Xorg instead of Wayland and that was a no go for me with an eGPU so I switched to Opensuse.

Loucypher, 1 year ago

LMDE is really great. Just migrated an old 2013 iMac to it today. Everything works out of the box. Everything easy like you can expect from Mint and stable like on Debian. Difficult not to love.

The only thing you have to like is Cinnamon.

Frederic, 1 year ago

Ubuntu is Debian anyway. Why not installing MX (based on Debian too) with XFCE, it is the best experience I have had.

I come from good old LFS from the 90s and for me, a distro is just a kernel with some GNU utils, a window manager, and a way to get packages (which is about the only diff between “distro”)

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Makes sense. This is also what I deduced after installing arch in a vm. Its basically just a couple options. It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.

Celediel, 1 year ago

It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.

You may be interested in Bedrock Linux.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks for mentioning it! I‘ll check it out!

BaalInvoker, 1 year ago

Next step: try Arch Linux

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I did that, on a vm though. I learned a ton and would not want to miss the experience.

But arch is absolutely not something I would daily drive even if you paid me for it. It’s like driving a car which you have assembled from parts only. It works but you never know it it will start this morning.

jao, 1 year ago

I am running an Arch based distro called Garuda, and it’s been perfectly fine for me.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Although I get that arch based distros can work great, they’re not arch, same as ubuntu is not debian.

But I‘m happy that you’re happy.

drndramrndra, 1 year ago

Slapping an installation wizard on top of arch doesn’t make it a different distro…

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I have no idea how much difference there is… debian and ubuntu are not the same, one could argue that ubuntu and mint are very close but still they are different.

4vr, 1 year ago

Installed Arch couple of weeks back and was surprised how easy it had become once I overcame the first hurdle of connecting to wifi from command line.

Only thing I’m not happy with is the font rendering in Firefox. Hard to say if it is Arch or Firefox.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Pretty sure its arch as other distros dont have that from my experience.

BaalInvoker, 1 year ago

Dude, I daily drive my Arch for a few years and it does not gave me any major issue until today

It’s a myth that Arch is not stable

If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

Prunebutt, 1 year ago

Maybe if you don’t touch the AUR, or at least: if you’re really careful with it. But who could resist this tasty, tasty, unstable forbidden fruit of random software?

BaalInvoker, 1 year ago

Yeah… AUR is what Arch community likes the most, but also what makes Arch unstable the most.

I don’t use AUR at all. I’m always on Flatpak…

drndramrndra, 1 year ago

If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

Tell me you haven’t used a stable distro without telling me you haven’t used a stable distro.

Do you know why Debian, a stable distro, releases noncritical updates every ~2 years? Because they test their packages and make sure grub doesn’t release a faulty update and leave your machine in an unbootable state.

BaalInvoker, 1 year ago

Stable for what, buddy?

Debian for sure is stable for a server and Arch may not be as stable.

However if we are talking about a home use, Arch is stable enough. And with up to date packages.

I rather use Arch Linux with up to date packages then Debian with 2+ years out dated packages for my daily non-server use.

You’re not taking into account the use case. It’s simplistic to say that “Arch is not stable”. It is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

The same for Debian, I can say it’s outdated, and again, it is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

If you wanna play latest games, use latest softwares and be on the edge of the latest versions, Debian sucks. If you wanna a stable rock solid server, with all packages well tested, well, Arch sucks.

Just don’t be an asshole saying that X is better than Y dismissing the use case.

All I said at the beginning was: time to try Arch Linux.

But some of you can’t live with different opinions and downvoted my comment, as well tried to refute my comment. But, well, I wasn’t even arguing, I was doing a suggestion. So, yeah, do whatever you want, I don’t care

drndramrndra, 1 year ago

If stability is a spectrum, you’ve got to admit that Arch is on one end and Debian on the other.

I ran it on multiple devices for like 3 years. It breaks. Updates are stressful, especially if you have horrible internet in a foreign country.

Arch has many benefits, but it’s dishonest to call it stable. No amount of relativism will change that.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Sorry but you’re oot. People who switch to linux today are complete noobs compared to you and will do a ton of things you consider crazy.

The other distros will accept this or prevent it but arch wont even boot to the DE if you dont follow the wiki to the letter. I had to reaearch some stuff since I didnt get it from just the wiki and still got repeated freezes although I‘m a sysadmin for many years and have two linux servers (one of them for two years) which make no problems at all.

Arch is a pro distro, feel free to prove otherwise.

BaalInvoker, 1 year ago

I’m suggesting it to you, not to a completely noob. You know this caveats and probably will be fine

Anyway, use archinstall script. You don’t have to follow the wiki to the letter anymore.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I get that. But people will take „its a myth that arch is not stable“ out of context. It is absolutely not as stable as any other OS, at least if you use the wiki. I have not known about the script until recently.

itchick2014, 1 year ago

I agree that Arch is a pro distro. I do IT tech support, have background with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Knoppix, and Fedora and installing Arch was hard mode for me. Would I do it again? Hell yeah. Would I recommend it as a second or third install experience? Nope. Too many distros that are beginner to intermediate friendly. That said, I will forever have a fondness for pacman just because I like the name. I am still working out device drivers and a few smaller details a month later. Also, the wiki is written by someone who doesn’t do good technical writing. It assumes too much back end knowledge. I kept having to follow blog or article posts and still had to sandwich those snippets I got together hoping something worked…and again, I have some background knowledge of Linux already. An absolute beginner would be totally lost.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

You put this a lot better than I could. Its exactly what my experience was as well.

itchick2014, 1 year ago

Glad I am not alone, though I follow unixporn and other communities so was very familiar with the overall sentiments about Arch before diving in. I look forward to when I know a bit more about it. I put it on a laptop I specifically bought to install Linux alongside the existing windows install (LG Gram) so I knew I had nothing to lose and my whole intention was to learn. I would have never installed Arch on a machine I actually need to use at this point. I am lucky that I got as far as I did so quickly. lol.

AnneBonny, 1 year ago

KDE is the default DE for Debian these days?

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

No, gnome is. But debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install. You can use gnome, kde, cinnamon and a couple others which I forgot.

AnneBonny, 1 year ago

debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install

That’s nice.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Indeed. It feels very mature and no nonsense like, all over. The only thing that bothers me a bit are some „qol things“ like being able to switch mirrors if you made a bad choice or to easily choose german keyboard while leaving the OS in english for easier troubleshooting online.

So the pattern here seems to be „debian shows that it is community made and you can help make it better in opposition to ubuntu which is commercial and your participation helps both the community and the company“

worldsayshi, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Is it gnome 3 (shell)?

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

I have no idea. Sorry.

worldsayshi, 1 year ago

After a bit of searching I think people generally mean gnome 3 when they say gnome and gnome 2 is now known as Mate.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Ah! Got it! Thanks.

cybersandwich, 1 year ago

I get that you have the choice at install on debian which is nice, but the flavors and choices of Ubuntu (eg kubuntu ) are super readily available when making your install media. And I unless you are making it a game time decision as you go through the installer, which I doubt most people are, this seems like an incredibly trivial distinction.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thats viewing it only from one angle. People who are not totally familiar with what desktop environments are might not even consider kubuntu, lubuntu or xubuntu since they are viewed as seperate OSes by some.

Having this menu is very easy to implement but the possibilities are great.

cybersandwich, 1 year ago

Fair point

GravitySpoiled, 1 year ago

Thx for the post. Nice reading your experience.

Fluffychat flathub flathub.org/apps/im.fluffychat.Fluffychat

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks. I failed to mention that I found fluffychat from flathub shortly after through their website. :) but thanks for mentioning it.

wildflower, 1 year ago

It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro

Wow, do Ubuntu not have security updates in the “free” version?

where_am_i, 1 year ago

you hit apt update and get an add for Ubuntu pro. Invasive ads in my linux? no thanks.

bjorney, 1 year ago

This is disingenuous on OPs part.

All LTS releases get 5 years of updates. Ubuntu pro (which is free for non-commercial users FYI) extends the LTS support window to 10 years, which is 5 years more than any other Linux distribution I know of

Adanisi, 1 year ago

It’s still unacceptable to use the operating system, which is supposed to obey the user and nobody else, as a digital billboard.

Who’s making Ubuntu now, Microsoft!?

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Sorry, I meant „Additional security updates“. its not very useful for normal users and canonical is targeting enterprises with it but looking at it every day without a non hacky way to disable it just wore on me.

Rustmilian, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

All of them receive security updates.
Wether you’re a pro user or not only matters if you’re an LTS user.

waigl, 1 year ago

With the LTS versions being the best and obvious choice for your average non-technical user who just wants to get some work done…

atzanteol, 1 year ago

You get 5 years of security updates with Ubuntu lts.

waigl, 1 year ago

And constant non-optional pop-ups nagging you to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro during those five years. I’d actually be kinda okay with it if it were only after, an if just as a reminder that, hey, the LTS period is over, you need to switch to the next LTS release now.

atzanteol, 1 year ago

What? I see no such thing. Is that after the initial 5 years or something?

waigl, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

This is on Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, so well within the 5 year window. I’m complaining because I kept getting frantic calls from people using that who didn’t know what was going on.

Rustmilian, 1 year ago

The normal 6 month stable releases are perfectly fine. Infact they can be the better choice depending on hardware age.

waigl, 1 year ago

Depends a lot on what kind of user. I specified “non-technical” with a reason. I have, in the past, recommended Ubuntu to a small number of friends and family members. These are people who aren’t particularly comfortable using computers in the best of times. They very much don’t need the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything. They need to do billing, taxes, correspondance, email and various other tasks related to their small business, they need that to work reliably, and if at all possible, to work exactly the same way as it did the last five years. And if there is any pop-up they don’t immediately understand (for example because it’s in English instead of their native language, yes that still happens in Ubuntu quite a bit), they will call me on the phone.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to support non-technical end-users, but for some of them, even something as seemingly trivial as a menubar that has moved from the top to the side can be issue that needs explaining and training. For that kind of user, I really do want to postpone all updates beyond pure bug and security fixes for as long as reasonably possible. Five years sounds reasonable. Six months does not.

Rustmilian, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Ubuntu is not Arch Linux. The 6 month release doesn’t give you the “the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything” in the first place.
If they don’t like change so much as to not being able to handle some minor UI updates, then their better off using a Chromebook lol.
You’d just be making it harder for them move from the outdated software in the long run, because literally everything changes between moving LTS from the 5y EOL period instead of gradually over each major normal 6 month releases.

sturlabragason, 1 year ago

noobient.com/…/canonical-starts-charging-for-ubun…

waigl, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

They do, including those that are in Debian, but they also have an additional source of faster security updates developed in house, which they hold back from the free path in favor of the pro package.

Personally, I feel a bit torn about this. On the one hand, this should be, officially at least, purely an additional service on top of what’s available in the baseline distro, and isn’t taking anything away from that.

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with holding back security fixes from anyone, ever, for any reason. Also, the claim that it will never take away anything from the free base distro is at least a little bit suspect. I would not be surprised if the existence of the pro path were to gradually erode the quality and timelyness of the base security upgrade path over time. Also, Ubuntu is now very annoying about nagging you to upgrade to pro, and the way to disable that is fairly involved and very much non-official. The whole thing goes against what I expect from a F/OSS operating system. I don’t quite understand why this topic hasn’t been a much bigger issue in Linux circles yet. It certainly doesn’t sit right with me…

solidgrue, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Not that I’m a fan of Ubuntu here (I generally don’t run it when I can run anything else), but I do want to say I think you’ve missed the point of the Pro tier.

Ubuntu releases two stable versions a year which are supported for 2 years or so. This is like a slow rolling distribution, and makes the newest software’s available. It receives regular security updates from upstream, from Canonical, and from backports, again for up to about 2 years. Most users install this version.

Ubuntu LTS editions are similar to the above, but receive all the same security updates for 5 years instead of 2. These distributions are generally targeted for Enterprise users who value stability over having the newest software, and for whom upgrading comes with significant time, expense and risk. The 5 year window is customary among other distros, and is largely supported by and throughout the Dev community.

Ubuntu LTS Pro editions extend the LTS support editions for an additional 5 years, meaning a Pro distro enjoys 10 years of security updates from upstream, backports, and from Canonical where needed. Canonical might even open source their fixes back into upstream for other maintainers and distros to use, depending on the situation. However, since Canonical is providing the work, they charge subscription fees to cover their costs for it from their target audience: Enterprises who can’t or REALLY don’t want to upgrade

Why an Enterprise might not want to upgrade has to do with risk and compliance. Corporate IT security is a different world, where every bit of software may need to be reviewed, assessed, tested and signed-off upon. Major software upgrades would need to be recertified to mitigate risk and ensure compliance, which takes significant time and expense to complete in good faith. Not having to do it every 2 or 5 years is money in the bank, especially when the environment doesn’t introduce new requirements very often.

Canonical is meeting a market demand with their Pro tier by allowing these customers to spend a fraction of their recertification costs on a software subscription. It’s overall good for the ecosystem because you have what amounts to corporate sponsors pumping money into keeping older packages maintained for longer. This let’s them keep using the same software distro all the rest of us can use for free.

I’m not shy about calling bullshit on ANY distro that operates in bad faith, and they all get into some BS from time to time. Nevertheless, Canonical are acting in good faith on this, and are merely collecting money for their time and skill to provide maintenance on FOSS packages that might otherwise go unmaintained.

tl;dr: Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign. Keep the pitchforks sharp and the torches dry for another day.

edit: typos

waigl, 1 year ago

Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign

Then please show me the button (and I mean button, not command-line exclusive settings or config file entries in /etc, and certainly not unofficial trickery like third party repositories that replace Ubuntu advantage packages with an empty decoy) that says “Thank you, I don’t need Ubuntu Pro, please stop nagging me about it”.

solidgrue, 1 year ago

Oh, I never said they weren’t absolute prats about invading user space with advertising their bullshit. The Lens fiasco, Snaps, the popup warnings in apt breaking scripts, and the lack of UI toggles to easily disable those nag messages are all reasons I run other distros. There’s a big Mint colored button to turn on the Ubuntu experience without the nagging.

You have other choices that do no not shove that bullshit in your face. Canonical is gonna canonical. Nobody said you have to play their game.

My point was they are not withholding anything community-based from anyone. They are entitled to charge for their original work, even they are pushy about it. They even abide by the license and distribute it the changes when complete, but they’re not gonna just do it for giggles.

Chewy7324, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

The additional Ubuntu Pro security updates are also open source, which means open source maintainers are free to adopt them for the regular security updates (and some do).

If Canonical didn’t charge for those additional security updates they wouldn’t be able to pay for developing them, which would result in only core packages getting patched again. Also it’s possible to make an account and get them for free on a few devices, so it’s really not so bad. This way of doing things is better than what RedHat is doing with RHEL.

If Canonical restricted maintainer from applying Canonicals patches, I’d change my opinion. For me I don’t need security updates that badly, so I’m fine with Debian, NixOS (or Ubuntu non-Pro).

waigl, 1 year ago

That would be all absolutely fine and dandy if I could easily just opt out in a way that makes the system stop bothering me about it. But I can’t.

savbran, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

You could try Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) it has timeshift installed in the live iso, useful to restore a system when it’s unbootable. Anyway it doesn’t come with KDE but Cinnamon or XFCE.

For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.

For a Deskop or laptop in my opinion Fedora KDE or Gnome is the best experience.

N0x0n, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.

You can have a similar experience from a rolling release with debian !

Trixie (testing) or Sid (unstable) or backports !

Backports seems promising because that’s the version of the package going into the next debian release.

dasenboy, 1 year ago

Don’t you mean Sid (unstable) ? :)

N0x0n, 1 year ago

Edited !

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Interesting! I have not tried fedora yet. I really like to be able to get some time off gnome for now though. Is there a particular difference between debian based distros and fedora? I cant really say I know them. The biggest differences I see make the desktop environments. Everything else, like package managers are also flexible.

JubilantJaguar, 1 year ago

There is all but no difference if you use a desktop environment. That’s where the variation is.

haui_lemmy, 1 year ago

Thanks for pointing that out. I had a feeling that this would be the conclusion but I‘m still open to learn more.

pelotron, 1 year ago

It also uses the Red Hat RPM package format and a different package manager. But it just amounts to a few different commands to learn if you manage packages on the command line.